Apparently, what made all the governments 90% sure it was a bomb was some last second sound on the black box cockpit voice recorder. The turnaround in opinion was immediate. No one has described the sound, calling it an "unknown sound", with many assuming it was of an explosion. I'm wondering if the sound wasn't something else -- like someone shouting "Allahu Akbar", which only takes a second to say.

Why did ISIS choose Sharm el Sheikh as a target instead of another popular Russian tourist destination ? With all the photos we've seen of the plane's damage, we haven't seen many of the place itself, except on maps. From the maps, it seems like place in the middle of nowhere. Not so.

Just two weeks before the crash, the Four Seasons in Sharm el Sheikh posted on its website that it had just received two new awards, one from Conde Nast Traveler and one from New-Wealth.com (a publication that tracks the hotel usage and preferences of multi-millionaires -- those with a wealth of more than $10 million. [More...]